about the third or week of august he gets a letter from france saying napoleon was having second thoughts. so severeson says, well, i do think we have the power there, and, boom, it's done. [laughter] franklin roosevelt, when he was taking the critical steps to preparing us and providing aid to britain in the runup to the great contest over liberty in the middle of the 20th century explicitly pointed to the louisiana purchase as a model for what an executive should do in a teem of crisis. in a time of crisis. jefferson himself said that the duty of a magistrate is to the line of the law, but it is not the highest duty. that the survival and success of the country is your highest obligation. one person's imperial president i is another person's hero. one person's tyranny is another person's brilliant reform. part of what we have to struggle with from age to age in america is realizing that some generations there's going to be an excess of power useed in a way -- used in a way in which we approve, and in some generations there's going to be an excess of power used in ways which we would fig